My Baby Is A Real Baby Now

Is it because I’ve been through this enough now that I can sense these shifts? I can look at him and just feel and know that he’s grown. Not just that he’s bigger, and boy is he bigger- filling out 12 month outfits that finally let me buy both his and Lowell’s clothes from the same section so ALL THE MATCHING will be happening.

I can tell that he recognizes new things. I can see when he understands something for the first time.

I think with each baby I’m more and more acutely aware of the passing of time. Like the day I looked at Wallace and knew he was no longer a newborn, now I look at him and know he’s… what would I call it? A real baby? He’s always been a baby, obviously, but now he’s babbling and rolling over and teething.

He’s really the best age… before we get to the next best age. None of this makes sense but also probably makes total sense to a lot of you.

He says “momma” now, I swear. It’s not often. It’s usually after he’s tried a lot of other ways to get my attention and then the sound slips out of his mouth, so of course I react then because he said momma! So I guess that’s how it will come to be that only the 4th baby says momma before dada.

And what’s funny is by the time you have a 4th baby, you really would rather them learn to say dada first and then only say dada because, honestly, the sooner they can learn that dada is equally capable of getting them a snack without them having to walk past him to come find you in a bathroom upstairs, well, really the better for everyone.

No hope for this momma’s boy, I guess.

All that growing the first few months is super important, but it’s so boring. Nobody gets excited about their head circumference blowing up in a week. They do all the important growing while they are sleeping, and that’s no fun.

But now? Now the growing happens in daylight hours. The rolling, the voice discovery as he lets out his first velociraptor screeches, the moments I rub my fingers on his gums in the morning to find fragments of razor sharp teeth that have shown themselves at last.

Goodness, I really like when my babies turn into real babies. I like when all that growing is entertaining, and all that feeding them all day and all night rewards me with cheeks on cheeks and rolls on rolls.

As annoying as it is for other people to tell me to “cherish this time” I think I will consciously try to cherish this time, while also giving myself permission to get annoyed at how little I get done while cherishing it.

None of this makes sense, but it probably makes a lot of sense to a lot of you.